


Burden of the Flesh

by sister_coyote



Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Feminist Themes, Introspection, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-29
Updated: 2007-01-29
Packaged: 2017-10-06 08:17:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sister_coyote/pseuds/sister_coyote
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No matter how similar their roles, in some ways Drace will always live in a slightly different world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burden of the Flesh

Gabranth's mouth tastes a little of apples, and his touch is gentle, trailing up her arms, pushing up her sleeves and leaving goosebumps—and her hands flat on his chest feel the way his muscles move sleek and subtle with each movement. But when he reaches for the laces of her shirt, she stops him.

He complies immediately, which is part of why she's willing to be here with him in the first place, but she can see the question in his eyes. "You don't want to—" he begins.

"I don't want to get with child," she says, gently. "It would be worth my position; I'll not risk it." With a swollen belly, the senate and the other judges would bid her step down—perhaps with some word about her safety, the safety of the child. That might well be true, but she also knows true as true that they would never let her take up the armor of a Judge again, after. A tryst, however much she may want it, pales in comparison to the trajectory of the rest of her life.

Gabranth's eyes darken a little. She doubts he has thought of this, even though had he thought of it he would have seen her problem, surely; but it is not something that one considers readily, in Archadia or most of her neighbors. A respectable woman lies with a man only when married, and then, if her desire is not to bear new sons and daughters for Empire, at least she is wise enough not to say so. A woman who wishes to lie with a man who is not married to him is another thing again. It must be hard for him, to think of such things with a woman he respects; it must strain the paradigms in which his thoughts lie.

Then he says—with an eagerness that is nearly charming—"There are preventatives. Charms and . . . things. For this sort of occasion."

"There are," she says. "But do you have one?"

She sees the thought pass behind his eyes, the thought of 'why would _I_ have one,' but he is not a foolish man, nor a bad one. The world is full of things she must think of daily, he not at all. If she was bitter every time the world reminded her of that, she would have no time for anything else. "No," he admits, without further embroidery, and she is obscurely pleased.

"Nor do I," she says. "And those preventatives that one takes afterward are uncomfortable at best, often painful—I have no wish to spend the next two days beset by cramps. We shall have to wait until I can acquire a charm to stave off pregnancy that works more gently."

He doesn't argue, and she is pleased with that, and a little proud. Many men would. Nor does he comment on her knowledge; he is wise enough to know she is not a virgin, and wise enough, she thinks, to accept that for what it is: a fact of her life, and one of which she is not ashamed. Part of it may be that he is not Archadian by birth or raising. Part of it is that he's a good man, for all he does not always know to think. "So," he says. "What now?"

She smiles a little, and traces her fingers along his jawline. "Now we do what we can do without risk," she says.

She expects to see disappointment in his eyes, and is pleased that what she sees is closer to hope. "Yes," he says.


End file.
